Lasun Alagbe
Some top officials in the office of the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, have asserted their Islamic faith.
In a video on that Phenomenal.com.ng watched on Facebook on Wednesday, each of them not only mentions their names, they also declare they are Muslims.
Among them are Babafemi Ojudu, who gives his name as Senator Babafemi AbdulGaniy Ojudu.
Others who speak in the video include Abdu Rahman Ade Ipaye, Mariam Uwais, Balikis Seidu, Abdullai Gwari, Ahmad Rufai Zakari, Olabisi Fatima Ogunbunmi, Afeez Kau and Muhammed Buraimo.
This seems to be a smart response to those alleging that Osinbajo, who has declared interest to contest in 2023, is the candidate of his church, the Redeemed Christian Church of God.
This is as others criticise the aspiration of Osinbajo’s former boss and probably godfather, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, of being insensitive to the fact that the current President, Muhammadu Buhari, is a Muslim.
Particularly accusing Osinbajo of the RCCGisation of Nigeria, Director of the Muslim Rights Concern, Professor Ishaq Akintola, had alleged in a statement:
“As a pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Osinbajo is simply carrying out his own part of the RCCG instruction dished out a few weeks ago on the creation of a political department in all parts of Nigeria. We see Osinbajo as the arrowhead of the RCCGisation of the Nigerian polity. His declaration must therefore be seen as a demonstration of his own loyalty and obedience to the directive which came from the RCCG headquarters.
“But MURIC cannot keep quiet after Osinbajo’s declaration because it is not in consonance with our agenda for the South West. We have never hidden this agenda from public view as it was made public as far back as February 2021 when we declared our preference for a Yoruba Muslim president.
“Osinbajo’s declaration presupposes that Yoruba Christians are born to rule. It gives the provocative impression that Yoruba Muslims are ‘children of slaves’ (a la Ishmael and Isaac storyline) who should never taste power. As we have argued in earlier press statements, all the four Yorubas who have been in Aso Rock were Christians: Olusegun Obasanjo, Earnest Shonekan, Oladipo Diya, and the incumbent vice president Yemi Osinbajo.
“If Osinbajo is basking in the born-to-rule syndrome of the RCCG, he should remember that a Muslim, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, brought him to limelight when he served under him as a commissioner in his cabinet. No matter how much they try to rewrite history, nobody can wish that fact away. The same Tinubu brought up your name ab initio in connection with his current position in Aso Rock.
“If the above is true (and it is), the fact that Tinubu declared on 22nd January 2022 when he met President Muhammadu Buhari in Aso Rock makes Osinbajo’s declaration look like a stab in the back. The vice president cannot claim to be unaware of what even a three-month-old baby knows already. Or is this how to repay goodness and mentorship? There is something immoral about Osinbajo’s declaration. It stands in contradistinction to a cardinal Yoruba concept, the ‘omoluabi’ concept. . It is absolutely ‘unomoluabi’.
“Even the RCCG angle now becomes more interesting. Osinbajo’s declaration comes across as pure evangelisation, particularly in view of the declaration of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) directing all its parishes to open political offices in support of its members seeking political posts. The proselytization of the presidency by no other person than the vice president himself is an unprecedented and dangerous development. No high-level candidate in a general election has ever done it in this country.
“Osinbajo’s political party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) should watch it. Nobody should underrate the perspicacity of Nigerian Muslims. We will reject any party that promotes Redeemisation by forcing an RCCG pastor on Muslim electorates. MURIC is not in alliance with any political party. It is already certain that APC will lose the votes of Yoruba Muslims if it fields an RCCG pastor. We need no rocket science to know that.”
